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[Fallingwater: Trellis built to accommodate tree]
Fallingwater: The trellis over the driveway is built to accommodate a tree.
The driveway trellis (reverse angle) being built with a semi-circular cutaway around a tree symbolizes the theme in the design of the Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater house to work with nature and harmonize with it rather than setting itself apart and dominating it. Even in the famous view from downstream, the house participates in the dramatic presentation of the rock formations, instead of lording above them in an isolated spot as a man-made imposition.
      This is just past the "front" door, but before passing under the passageway over the driveway to the covered walk which climbs the hill to the guest house. Visible above, looking up through an opening the trellis are windows with a characteristic Wright feature: no vertical corner post. In the photo several windows are open but the screens are closed, so the full effect is not apparent here. For a similar treatment where two panes of glass meet without a vertical corner post, see the guest house window detail.
Original photo, taken by the webmaster.
Click here or on photo for much larger (1536x1024 pixel, 541k) version.

In Wright's statements his principles are denoted by words embodying deep intuitions: organic, democratic, plasticity, continuity. During careful study of his texts and his architecture, I have come to believe that these terms present different aspects of one central insight. To Wright, architecture was a great inclusive agency through which humankind adapted the environment to human needs and, reciprocally, attuned human life to its cosmos; amid continual changes architecture could keep human life more natural and nature more humane.

- Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright Country House, p. 31.


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